Cape Town Festival of Beer 2011

The second Cape Town Festival of Beer was held between the 25-27 November 2011 at Hamilton Rugby Club. I attended the festival on Friday and Sunday. Two days for R100 was money well spent. I missed the tasting glass at the entry though. Maybe something for next year?

For me a festival is about beer tasting and brewers and not so much about drinking a lot of beer. My main focus was to taste beer that I never tasted before. In this case it was from the new and small breweries like the established Saggy Stone to the new Gallows Hill Brewing Company, Devil´s Peak Brewing Company and Royal Mzansi. Good luck to you all in the future! You can find my ratings on Ratebeer.

I also met a lot of interesting people at the festival. It is so nice to meet people that really like to talk about beer and brewing.

I would like to point out that I found SABMillers attitude towards new brewers much more appealing than what you see in Europe. It is so easy to blame the “big company” for everything but they do have a good side to them as well. The SABMillers people at the festival were very friendly and open minded.

Could it be improved and be bigger?

I think this festival has a potential of becoming 5 to 10 times as big in the future. South Africa is only in the beginning of the beer revolution, so a couple of years from now the interest for good beer is going to explode. 100 beers today could easily become 300-400 in a few years.

A tasting glass at the entry would be an improvement. More tasting and less drinking. A blog corner would also be an improvement. Many people blog about beers and I think that a corner for them to meet brewers in a calm and relaxed environment is a good idea. Get more people to write about it. It is also nice for beer bloggers to meet.

The best festival beer on the table?

Well the Red Weiss from Paulaner Bräuhaus was really, really nice followed by many of the beers from Triggerfish (as always). Devil´s Peak Brewing and Gallows Hills Brewing is also two breweries I’d like to mention.